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	<title>How to install FreeBSD on a libreboot system</title>
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	<div id="pagetop" class="section">
		<h1>How to install FreeBSD on a libreboot system</h1>
            <p>
				This section relates to preparing, booting and installing
				FreeBSD on your libreboot system, using nothing more than a USB flash drive (and <i>dd</i>). They've only been tested on a Lenovo ThinkPad x200.
			</p>
            <p>
                It is expected that you use text mode in libreboot (txtmode images),
                for the early boot process in FreeBSD.
                <strong>Booting the installer results in a red flickering text display,
                and doesn't boot.</strong>
            </p>
            <p>
                Thanks go to ioxcide in <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/BSD/comments/53jt70/libreboot_and_bsds/">this Reddit post</a>
                for the initial instructions.
            </p>
            <p>
                TODO: test FreeBSD more extensively, and make sure it works (and fix it if it does not).
                Instructions are provided here, to boot and install FreeBSD but we're
                not sure whether it is currently fully compatible with libreboot.
            </p>
			<ul>
				<li><a href="#prepare">Prepare the USB drive (in FreeBSD)</a></li>
				<li><a href="#noencryption">Installing FreeBSD without full disk encryption</a></li>
				<li><a href="#encryption">Installing FreeBSD with full disk encryption</a></li>
				<li><a href="#booting">Booting</a></li>
				<li><a href="#configuring_grub">Configuring Grub</a></li>
				<li><a href="#troubleshooting">Troubleshooting</a></li>
			</ul>
			<p>
				<a href="./">Back to previous index</a>
			</p>
	</div>

	<div class="section">
		<p>
			<b>This section is only for the GRUB payload. For depthcharge (used on CrOS devices in libreboot), instructions
			have yet to be written in the libreboot documentation.</b>
		</p>
	</div>

	<div id="prepare" class="section">
	
        <p>
            freebsd.img is the installation image for FreeBSD. Adapt
            the filename accordingly, for whatever FreeBSD version you use.
        </p>

        <h2>Prepare the USB drive (in FreeBSD)</h2>
            <p>
                <a href="https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/bsdinstall-pre.html">This page</a>
                on the FreeBSD website shows how to create a bootable USB drive
                for installing FreeBSD. Use the <em>dd</em> on that page.
            </p>

        <h2>Prepare the USB drive (in NetBSD)</h2>
            <p>
               <a href="https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/how_to_install_netbsd_from_an_usb_memory_stick/">This page</a>
               on the NetBSD website shows how to create a NetBSD bootable USB drive
               from within NetBSD itself. You should use the <em>dd</em> method
               documented there; you can use this with any ISO, including
               FreeBSD.
            </p>

		<h2>Prepare the USB drive (in LibertyBSD or OpenBSD)</h2>

            <p>
                If you downloaded your ISO on a LibertyBSD or OpenBSD system,
                here is how to create the bootable FreeBSD USB drive:
            </p>

			<p>
				Connect the USB drive. Check dmesg:<br/>
				<b>$ dmesg | tail</b><br/>

				Check to confirm which drive it is, for example, if you think its sd3:<br/>
				<b>$ disklabel sd3</b>
			</p>

			<p>
				Check that it wasn't automatically mounted. If it was, unmount it. For example:<br/>
				<b>$ doas umount /dev/sd3i</b><br/>
			</p>

			<p>
				dmesg told you what device it is. Overwrite the drive, writing the FreeBSD installer to it with dd. For example:<br/>
				<b>$ doas dd if=freebsd.img of=/dev/rsdXc bs=1M; sync</b><br/>
			</p>
			
			<p>
				You should now be able to boot the installer from your USB drive. Continue reading, for
				information about how to do that.
			</p>

			<p>
				<a href="#pagetop">Back to top of page</a>.
			</p>	

		<h2>Prepare the USB drive (in GNU/Linux)</h2>

            <p>
                If you downloaded your ISO on a GNU/Linux system,
                here is  how to create the bootable FreeBSD USB drive:
            </p>

			<p>
				Connect the USB drive. Check dmesg:<br/>
				<b>$ dmesg</b><br/>

				Check lsblk to confirm which drive it is:<br/>
				<b>$ lsblk</b>
			</p>

			<p>
				Check that it wasn't automatically mounted. If it was, unmount it. For example:<br/>
				<b>$ sudo umount /dev/sdX*</b><br/>
				<b># umount /dev/sdX*</b>
			</p>

			<p>
				dmesg told you what device it is. Overwrite the drive, writing your distro ISO to it with dd. For example:<br/>
				<b>$ sudo dd if=freebsd.img of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync</b><br/>
				<b># dd if=freebsd.img of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync</b>
			</p>
			
			<p>
				You should now be able to boot the installer from your USB drive. Continue reading, for
				information about how to do that.
			</p>

			<p>
				<a href="#pagetop">Back to top of page</a>.
			</p>

	</div>


	<div id="noencryption" class="section">

		<h2>Installing FreeBSD without full disk encryption</h2>

			<p>
				Press C in GRUB to access the command line:
			</p>
			<p>
				grub&gt; <b>kfreebsd (usb0,gpt3)/boot/kernel/kernel</b><br/>
                grub&gt; <b>set FreeBSD.vfs.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/da1p3</b><br/>
                grub&gt; <b>boot</b>
			</p>
			<p>
				It will start booting into the FreeBSD installer. Follow the normal process for installing FreeBSD.
			</p>

			<p>
				<a href="#pagetop">Back to top of page</a>.
			</p>

	</div>

	<div id="encryption" class="section">

		<h2>Installing FreeBSD with full disk encryption</h2>

			<p>
                TODO
			</p>

			<p>
				<a href="#pagetop">Back to top of page</a>.
			</p>

	</div>
		
	<div id="booting" class="section">

		<h2 id="booting">Booting</h2>

			<p>
                TODO
			</p>

			<p>
				<a href="#pagetop">Back to top of page</a>.
			</p>

	</div>

	<div id="configuring_grub" class="section">
		
		<h2>Configuring Grub</h2>

			<p>
                TODO
            </p>
			<p>
				<a href="#pagetop">Back to top of page</a>.
			</p>
			
	</div>
		
	<div id="troubleshooting" class="section">
		
		<h1>Troubleshooting</h1>

			<p>
				Most of these issues occur when using libreboot with coreboot's 'text mode' instead of the coreboot framebuffer.
				This mode is useful for booting payloads like memtest86+ which expect text-mode, but for FreeBSD
				it can be problematic when they are trying to switch to a framebuffer because it doesn't exist.
			</p>

			<p>
				In most cases, you should use the vesafb ROM images. Example filename: libreboot_ukdvorak_vesafb.rom.
			</p>

			<h2>won't boot...something about file not found</h2>
				<p>
					Your device names (i.e. usb0, usb1, sd0, sd1, wd0, ahci0, hd0, etc) and numbers may differ. Use TAB completion.
				</p>

			<p>
				<a href="#pagetop">Back to top of page</a>.
			</p>
				
	</div>

	<div class="section">

		<p>	
			Copyright &copy;  2016 Leah Rowe &lt;info@minifree.org&gt;<br/>
			Copyright &copy;  2016 Scott Bonds &lt;scott@ggr.com&gt;<br/>
            Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
			under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license
			or any later version published by Creative Commons;
			
			A copy of the license can be found at <a href="../cc-by-sa-4.0.txt">../cc-by-sa-4.0.txt</a>
		</p>

		<p>
			Updated versions of the license (when available) can be found at
			<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode</a>
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